


Pictures of You

by dreamofhorses



Category: Actor RPF, American (US) Actor RPF, Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF, Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Masturbation, Phone Calls & Telephones, Pining, Unresolved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 22:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14342148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamofhorses/pseuds/dreamofhorses
Summary: Timmy's "Mystery of Love" Instagram story over the weekend prompted me to combine several ideas that had been rattling around my fic list into this little piece of completely unresolved long-distance angst. Armie is in New Orleans and can't believe Timmy didn't tell him he was coming to Coachella.Either the Cure song that the fic is named for, or "I'll Be Seeing You" (especially as performed by Billie Holiday or Julie London) would be a great soundtrack.Dedicated as always to my Slack comrades :timmybow: to you all.





	Pictures of You

_ You just left? WTF, Tim? _

A part of Armie knew he shouldn’t send the text, knew better than to engage with Tim when he was angry. That had ended badly before, with Timmy biting his lip, apologizing over and over, fixing Armie with sorrow in those bottomless green eyes, and it had almost broken him. Armie made a note that when he sobered up he should add one of those apps to his phone that made him perform math problems before texting.  _ He’s on a plane to London already. He won’t see it for hours. He came to the US and didn’t call you. Sure, he posted that mopey Instagram story, but all that means is he misses Crema. He misses Luca and the sun and your touch. But only there, only then. If he wanted you he would have called. He wouldn’t have let you find out he was in the states from some Instagram tag. He’s always said Elio and Oliver wouldn’t have found each other with social media and now he’s letting you find him that same way. He doesn’t want you, Armie. _

Armie walks onto the balcony of his hotel room and looks down at Canal Street below him. He lights a joint and starts to justify it to himself. He’s alone in the city, trying to pretend filming anything ever again won’t make him wish he was back in Crema. He’s been drifting since the Oscars, assuming he’d have made time on the press tour to tell Timmy how he felt, amazed when it was all such a whirlwind and they got so inexplicably busy, never any time, never any time, until the morning after the awards in Austin when he woke up with the sudden knowledge in his bones that those had all been excuses. He’d order one more round, close down the bar, tell a rambling story to prolong an interview, just so he wouldn’t find himself asking Timmy if he could come up to his room afterward, so there was never any time they could be alone, never any time for Armie to reach to Timmy with a touch that said  _ yes, why did we wait, I know there are problems, we’ll outrun them, just come here. Here. _

The weed hits his bloodstream and his hands and feet start to tingle. He knows that means the same feeling will soon hit other parts of him and goes inside to lay on the bed, leaving the balcony doors open in case the wind blows something, anything into the room that will smell like Crema. Like home. Armie opens his suitcase and takes a thin brown paper bag from a zippered compartment where Liz never looks. He slides a magazine out of it and chuckles to himself at how this must look. Armie has bought plenty of magazines that people handed to him in studiously nondescript packaging. How funny any of those cashiers would find it that he never leaves home without a carefully concealed copy of GQ, a magazine no one in their right mind would bother hiding as they walked out of a CVS or a bookstore.

_ But then I’m not in my right mind, am I _ , Armie thinks as he lays the issue on his lap. It falls open to Timmy’s first shot, his hands tangled in his hair, the expression on his face the one of furtive curiosity with which he regards anything new. With which he once regarded Armie. Then Timmy’s expressions had grown warmer, expressions Armie only saw when Timmy looked at his family, or his oldest friends, or Luca. Then there had been those times, always so late at night, so warm outside, somehow the two of them alone, always so many stars in the sky, always wine but never courage, when Timmy had looked at Armie with expressions Armie swore he’d never seen on Timmy before or since. Expressions that would cut and heal at the same time. Expressions he felt like he was watching Timmy invent before his eyes to describe an emotion no one on earth had felt before.

When Armie goes to flip the page of the magazine it falls again to the next page featuring Timmy. Armie has creased the spine so that it falls to these pages naturally; otherwise his fingertips alone would have worn valuable ink off the pages over the hundreds of times he had flipped through it over the past months. He turns the page now, absently, touching lightly so as not to leave oil on the paper, and when he stops at the photo of Timmy in the bathtub it’s not exactly a surprise to him. This is his favorite photo of the set, Timmy’s vulnerable expression that Armie has seen so many times. That he used to be able to fix, and that he now fears he causes. 

“I’ll hold you,” Armie says under his breath to the magazine version of Timmy, a thing he’s never said to the real Timmy. A thing he’s wanted to say every time he saw that expression, but he’d play it off with a casual touch or a brotherly hug, and it would vanish from Timmy’s face and his eyes would shine at Armie with a hope he didn’t think he’d ever see. Even his own children didn’t think he could fix as much about the world as Timmy did. Armie imagines it, imagines actually being able to hold Timmy against him, rest his chin on Timmy’s shoulder, protect him for even one goddamn second from the things in the world that put out the light in people’s eyes, and feel Timmy’s slender length against him.

As unconsciously as the magazine falling open to the proper pages, Armie has grown hard and is palming himself inside his tracksuit pants. The magazine falls aside onto the bed and Armie stares out the window to the deep blue twilight beyond the balcony. Music drifts in from Canal Street.  _ I’ll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places... _ He drifts a bit, from the weed and the lazy, pointless masturbation, and might even have started to sleep a bit when the vibration of his phone on the bed beside him rouses him.

_ Tim. _

_ Fuck, he’s landed. _ Armie knows Timmy won’t be happy with him, just as clearly as he knows he has to answer this call. 

“Hey, Tim, how was your flight?” Armie asks in his best I-definitely-wasn’t-just-masturbating- to-your-magazine-spread voice.

“C’mon, Armie, don’t pull that with me right now.” Timmy sounds exhausted. Armie looks at the clock on his phone, does some quick math. Timmy must still be in the airport, he’d just deplaned. This must have been the first thing he did when he landed, even before he picked up his luggage. “What the hell was that text message? Are you mad at me?” TImmy’s voice, even in its exhaustion, goes thin and reedy with worry.

_ Fuck. _ “No, Tim, I’m not mad. I’m sorry, I was pretty drunk earlier when I sent that. Please just forget it, man, I’m really sorry.”

“Jesus, Armie, you can’t fucking do this to me. Why didn’t I call you when I came to Coachella? Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you’re filming a movie and I’m trying to respect your work and not ask you to fly off to California and party with some kid? Because I’m trying to remember that we’re not in Crema anymore and nothing I try is working so I’m throwing shit at the wall at this point? Because I’m trying to make memories in warm sunny places with music everywhere that  _ don’t _ involve you kissing me? That’s why, Armie, that’s why I didn’t call.”

“But it’s not working, is it?” Armie asks, softly, smoothing his voice to calm Timmy down. “You’re drinking a glass of wine and if you close your eyes for too long you expect to be in Crema when you open them again. If the sun’s too bright you feel breathless for no reason, like you were just riding a bike all afternoon through a field of blowing grass. And if it’s rainy, and windy, and just cold enough that a hug will warm you right through again, you hear the song. ‘Mystery of Love’ plays in your head and you can’t stop it, and it’s like we’re back on Luca’s carpet, your head in my lap and my hand in your hair, watching all the raindrops on the window joining to become one. I know you hear it too, I saw your Instagram story. I know it was just for me.”

“Of course it was, Armie,” and Armie can fucking  _ hear _ Timmy biting his lip from 4500 miles away. “I missed you.”

The sentence is so simple, so declarative, so uncomplicated. Armie doesn’t know how Timmy does it, just  _ feels _ , just moves through the world without masks. “I miss you too, Tim,” Armie murmurs, wondering if Timmy will notice he’s changed to the present tense. “I--I love you.” It’s out of his mouth before he knows it, and it’s not like he’s never said it to Timmy before. But it’s always been in person, with a quick hug or a squeeze around the shoulder, a reinforcement instead of a plea. As soon as Armie says it in the darkness, alone, with Timmy thousands of miles away, he realizes love can be a question as well as a statement.

“Please don’t do this,” Timmy’s voice is almost at a whisper. “It’s too much, Armie. Every time we kissed it was like the world fell away. And now the world is all there is. I see you and Liz is there. The kids are there. Nick and Ashton and your family and my family are there. It’s not just us anymore and it never will be. And I have to learn that, and I want to learn it, and I want to learn from it. Maybe there’s a day when this will work, maybe there’s a lifetime where this will work, maybe this is just practice and a thousand years from now we’ll be born into bodies that have the luxury of learning to love each other. But not here, Armie, and not now.”

Armie’s crying. He doesn’t know when it started, but he’s sure the last time he cried was when Ford was born. He tries to hide it but Timmy with his damn bloodhound emotional intelligence sniffs it out in a second. He’s about to give Timmy enormous credit for his silence, for not saying anything and just letting Armie cry, until a high soft sniffle tells him Timmy is crying too.

“Are you back at your hotel?” Armie asks, genuine concern in his voice at the thought of Timmy curled up in a restroom at Heathrow, crying into his phone.

“Yes,” Timmy mumbles, and Armie hears something brush against the phone as Timmy wipes his nose. “G-got a cab while we were talking.”

“Good, good,” Armie soothes. He’s starting to sober up now, and he feels terrible putting this all on Timmy all of a sudden. The least he can do is make sure Timmy’s comfortable in that hotel suite alone. “Tell me about your hotel room.”

“It’s--it’s really big and nicer than I’m used to,” Timmy sniffles again but his voice is getting clearer. “The bed’s really soft and the TV is gigantic.” At this he even summons a giggle. “You’d really get a kick out of it if--,” his voice hitches, but he pushes through it, “--if you were here.”

“Pretend I am,” Armie suggests, “just close your eyes and listen to my voice.”

“Hey,” Timmy asks drowsily, and Armie can tell he’s obeying instructions, “what were you doing when I called? You sounded tired but, like, weirdly worked up too.”

Armie’s eyes fall to where the shiny magazine pages are catching the light from the street lamp outside. He decides, in the interest of his new resolve to be a better friend to Timmy, to tell only half the truth. “I was pretending you were here with me.”

“Oh yeah?” Timmy voice brightens but there’s still sleep pushing at the edges. “What were we doing?”

“From the sound of it this is gonna be a bedtime story,” Armie chides, but at the thought of Timmy alone in a London hotel, fully clothed on his bed and listening to Armie’s voice, his throat closes with tears again.

“Will you fall asleep on the phone with me?” Timmy pleads, his voice fading off at the end of the question so that it sounds like a statement.

“Of course,” Armie murmurs, closing his eyes and letting the warm Louisiana breeze dry the tears on his cheeks.

“I--I love you too, Armie,” Timmy mutters, and he must be sliding into sleep even then because the next sound Armie hears is the high gentle snore Timmy makes when he’s exhausted.

“I know, Tim,” Armie says to no one, and presses his phone even harder to his ear to hear Timmy sleep.  _ Memorize this _ , Armie tells himself.  _ Listen well, for once you’re lucky enough to know how rare this is while it’s happening instead of after the fact like always. _ He times his breathing to match Timmy’s, smiles fondly into the phone at the sounds of Timmy rolling over in his sleep, maybe even tells Timmy things while he sleeps that he will never say to anyone else in his life.

Then he sleeps so deeply that even housekeeping the next morning doesn’t wake him.


End file.
